Love Charms (10 page)

By
Selena Kitt

In
her attempt to escape her sisters’ Valentine matchmaking, Annie meets the
enigmatic Eric, who she realizes could finally be the man of her dreams. In
spite of, or maybe because of, Eric’s cryptic words and puzzling behavior, she
finds herself immediately intrigued and drawn to him like no other man she’s
ever met. One night in Annie’s sister’s kitchen seals their fate, as the two
lovers discover and explore the instant spark of heat between them. Their
evening comes to an abrupt end when the mysterious Eric disappears into the night,
and Annie realizes she doesn’t know his last name! How is she to find him?

After
months of fruitless searching, Annie finally gets a dubious break when she
meets Eric’s eccentric mother. Dita sends Annie on a journey deep into the
unknown, through an ever-twisting labyrinth of frustrating dead-ends and
seemingly strange, pointless missions. Annie’s life is turned upside down as
she searches for the one man who can make her life feel complete.

Told
in the spirit of magical realism, this modern day adaptation of the Greek myth
of Eros and Psyche takes Annie on each of Psyche’s tasks in her quest for her
lost love. Each task brings her closer to him and to realizations about
herself. Will Annie find Eric and reveal to him the secret she’s been keeping,
even from her sisters?

Warnings:
This title contains erotic situations, graphic language, and sex – a fun,
modern day magical-realism retelling of the Psyche and Eros myth that will
leave you mythtified yet satisfied.

Foreward

This
book is written in a style called “
magical realism
.” What in the heck is
that, you ask? If you’ve never experienced the genre, it can seem as if the
author has gone crazy…or maybe thinks you are.

The
Wikipedia definition of magical realism is:

(
a)n
aesthetic style or genre of fiction in which magical elements are blended into
a realistic atmosphere in order to access a deeper understanding of reality.
These magical elements are explained like normal occurrences that are presented
in a straightforward manner which allows the "real" and the
"fantastic" to be accepted in the same stream of thought.

Basically,
it just means that the author introduces something totally weird and out of
place in a realistic setting. In most works of fiction, authors want to
“suspend disbelief.” In other words, they want you to totally immerse yourself
in the story and find nothing that might pull you out of it or make you
question their created reality.

With
magical realism, it’s nearly the opposite. The author will give you a realistic
setting, and then introduce totally unexplainable magical or unrealistic
elements to the story.

This
book is a re-telling of the Eros and Psyche myth, but it doesn’t take place in
ancient Greece—it takes place in suburban America with characters who are
larger than life and behave in very unusual ways. What else could you expect
from gods and goddesses?

If
you haven’t brushed up on your Greek mythology lately, take a look at a brief
synopsis of the story somewhere on the Internet. This re-telling doesn’t follow
it to the letter, but you may have more fun reading if you are already familiar
with the myth.

Magical
realism can be a strange, disconcerting experience, but once you’ve realized
what’s happening, buckle your seatbelt and hang on, because it can also be a
fun, wild ride!

I
hope you enjoy this re-telling of the myth. Happy reading!

Chapter
One

Annie
found herself playing a game she hadn’t even thought about since she was twelve
years old and Robbie McCormick cut his lip on her braces. Her image of some
benign affair, where everyone stood around with a wine glass and nibbled
canapés, was deteriorating faster than her last blind date—with Stan the
Used-Car-Salesman.

She’d
had no idea when her sisters had invited her to this thing that it was going to
be some nightmarish, pre-teen flashback. Annie felt ridiculous in such a
revealing position, sitting cross-legged, trying to tuck her pastel patchwork
skirt between her thighs. She noticed a lot of the women had discarded their
shoes, but she was wearing soft, knee-high black boots that didn’t lend
themselves to a casual slipping-off. The entire room had morphed from mingling
adults to a gang of unruly adolescents, hooting and howling and elbowing each
other the minute they all sat in a circle on the floor in their suits and
skirts.

Her
oldest sister, Chloe, spun the empty rum bottle and everyone roared when the
narrow end settled on Rebecca, the middle sister. While the men whistled and
whooped, both women crawled, giggling, toward the center of the large circle. Their
cheeks flushed the same shade of rosy pink as they briefly touched lips.

Annie
blushed as well, appalled and astonished at how her body remembered these old
games with a dreadful pang and tingle: first kisses and
two-minutes-in-the-closet fumblings. There was the time she and her sisters had
tried to make their own soap opera just to have an excuse to kiss the boys.
Then there was the summer they’d built a fort made of someone’s discarded
turquoise carpet and played spin-the-bottle with an empty gin bottle Gary
Hillman snitched from his mom’s stash.

There
was a burst of laughter from the other room and Annie glanced toward the
adjoining door to the den. She wondered what they were playing in there. Truth
or dare? They sound just like teenagers, she thought, like some feral pack full
of adolescent angst. Are we really just one immature game away from that part
of ourselves? She smiled wryly, feeling far removed from any sensible adult
reality as she watched Rebecca creep back to the middle of the circle to spin
the bottle.

A
chorus of “woo-hoos!” sang out when the bottleneck found John, Becca’s husband
of two years, and they kissed. Annie winced when she saw his tongue slip into
her mouth. She looked away, focusing on the red and white streamers hanging
above her head. There were red foil hearts with plump cupids pasted in their
centers spinning wildly on threads and attached to the ceiling by thumbtacks.

Annie
was surprised Chloe had allowed tacks in her ceiling, even for something as
important as maintaining the theme of the night. The sound of the bottle
spinning on the hardwood floor brought Annie’s focus back to the game. John’s
eyes were glued to the bottle as it slowed. She ducked as if she could avoid it
as the bottle stopped, pointing just past her knee to the chubby girl on her
left. Thank god. John was crawling toward them, grinning and eyeing Annie’s
hemline, while the redhead next to her blushed to match her hair. Rebecca was
watching, looking casual, but Annie knew better.

“Hey,
I think this is pointing to Anne,” John exclaimed as he drew nearer. “Look at
the angle.”

“This
isn’t geometry, John, come on,” Annie hissed at him, keeping her voice low,
hoping her sisters couldn’t hear. “Kiss the girl and get it over with already!
Looks like she needs it more than I do.” Annie cut her eyes to the redhead’s
face, which had flushed a deeper shade. The girl looked down at her lap as if
there were something interesting there.

John
raised his eyebrows at Annie, and she saw she had made a mistake. “Rebecca, I’m
serious. Come look! I swear this thing is pointing at your sister. Chloe, are
you the referee here?”

“John,
it’s pointing at Lynn, not Annie,” Chloe called. “Come on, let’s keep the game
going.”

“It
is not,” John insisted. “You aren’t even over here! Come look!”

“Oh
fuck this,” Annie muttered, struggling to stand without flashing the entire
group a shot of her panties. For a moment, she thought she had succeeded, but
from the look on a few of the guys’ faces, she realized they had seen
something. Raising her voice, she said, “You know what, John? You kiss the fat
girl here, and I’ll just step out of this juvenile little game that I never in
a million years thought I’d be playing at the age of twenty-seven, okay? What
do you say?”

Annie
nudged him hard in the side with her shin as she passed. She heard him grunt.
She turned back when she got to the kitchen door and saw the redhead standing,
wobbly, making her way in the opposite direction. Annie felt a stab of guilt
and shoved open the swinging door to her sister’s pristine kitchen. The light
was off, and she left it, knowing her way even in the dark. She plopped onto
one of the stainless steel kitchen chairs and unzipped her boots with a sigh,
then toed them off.

Annie
could hear her sister busily trying to save the day. “Let’s play the kissing
game!”

She
heard someone—possibly John—say, “I thought we were.”

Annie
sighed in relief when that awful, stunned silence turned back to party chatter.
She wished she drank or still smoked—or did anything dangerous and bad
for her. Anything that could make her feel good—or just alive—even
for a moment. Her sisters seemed to think the answer to Annie’s attitude was a
man and had set about finding her one—with a vengeance! When she looked
at Chloe and Rebecca’s lives though, she didn’t find much to envy. If that’s
what having a man was about, she didn’t want to have any part of it.

Besides,
Annie wanted something more, something different. She was tired of all the
games and hookups and pretending. She had been to hundreds of parties like this
one, and she always felt like some aging, dark-haired Barbie doll propped up in
the corner by her sisters for all the Kens to come by and gawk at. She could
never be herself, even for a moment. She always felt too guarded to let herself
really get to know people, let alone really feel anything for anyone.

Chloe
poked her head through the swinging kitchen door, spilling light into the room.
Annie covered her eyes, which had already adjusted to the darkness. “What do
you think you’re doing? You’re going to ruin everything!” Chloe hissed.

“Get
the fuck out of here,” Annie spat back, giving her sister the finger.

Chloe
rolled her eyes, opening the door to step in.

Annie
leaped to press against the swinging door, trapping Chloe firmly between the
door and the frame. Chloe grunted in surprise.

“I’m
not kidding. I am not going back out there, so you can forget about it. What
the hell are they doing now?” Annie stared past her sister, her brow furrowed
and her mouth agape in horror as men and women in a circle were passing a
playing card from person to person, mouth to mouth.

“The
kissing game,” Chloe replied meekly.

“Oh
my god. That’s it. Get out of this room and don’t let anyone else in here! You
got me? I am done with this Hook-Annie-Up-Valentine-Shindig!”

“But,
sweetie, you—”

“No!
Not another word from you, okay?”

“Okay,
fine. Could you...?” Chloe waved her hand, the one inside the kitchen,
indicating the door where she was stuck. Annie eased off a little and Chloe
sighed, stepping back out into the living room. “We were all just trying to do
something nice for you, Annie.”

“Yeah,
yeah. Thanks a lot. Appreciate it. Go!”

Annie
flopped into the kitchen chair, tipped it back and put her bare feet up. She
smiled with a bit of satisfaction, knowing she was probably the first and only
person to have a body part other than maybe an elbow on Chloe’s expensive
table.

“Didn’t
your mother ever tell you that you could crack your head open doing that?”

Annie
let out a yelp and the chair toppled backwards onto the hand-laid Italian tile.
She saw stars bursting in the darkness behind her eyes and blinked rapidly to
clear them. “Fuck!” she swore, rubbing the back of her head and rolling off the
chair onto the floor. Her head was tender and already swelling, and she thought
she could feel the wetness of blood. “I think I’m bleeding. Who’s there? Where
are you?”

“Right
here. Are you okay? I’m sorry.”

Annie
saw the shadowy figure move out from underneath the kitchen table.

“I
don’t know if I’m okay. I think I’m bleeding.” She tried to stand but
immediately felt woozy again and had to sit. She rubbed the swelling on the
back of her head, wondering how bad it really was. “Could you turn on the
light, please?”

“I’m
sorry, I can’t do that,” he replied, steadying her with a hand on her arm. It
was a warm hand, large, with a firm grip.

“Gee,
thanks, buddy. Fine, I’ll do it myself.” Annie sighed and started to stand
again. His hand on her arm kept her from moving.

“No,
please, don’t.” It was a request, but it didn’t sound like one.

“Why?
I think I’m really hurt.”

“Here,
let me see.” His hands were in her dark hair, moving over her scalp, finding
the aching knot and massaging it. At first, she winced and pulled away, but
then let him continue.
God, it’s been too long since someone touched me like
this.

“You’re
not bleeding,” he assured her.

“How
can you tell? It’s too dark in here. Let me turn on the light, and—”

“No!”

Annie
jumped. “Okay, weirdo...who are you?” He moved away from her. “Hello?” There
was no response, but she could make out his shape back under the table. Annie
sighed and rubbed her head again. With her dizziness abating, she stood and
headed for the light switch. “I don’t know what your problem is, but
I’m—”

“I’m
asking you.”

Annie’s
hand hesitated on the switch.

“Please,”
he implored her. “Don’t do that.”

“Why?”
she asked again. There was no response, just a deep silence from the darkness
under the table.

In
the quiet, she could hear the party continuing in the living room. She turned
her eyes to the dim outline of the door and heard Chloe direct, “No, no!
Kitchen is off limits!”

Annie
smiled gratefully. At least the door was being guarded for a while.

“Hey,
are you still there?” She cringed, mentally slapping herself for asking such a
stupid question.

“Yeah.”

Something
in his voice drew her to him. There was a strength in it, a certainty that
shouldn’t be coming from underneath a kitchen table. She moved away from the
door and back toward the voice, getting down on her knees to peer underneath.
She thought she saw the shimmer of a pair of glasses. She saw his hands resting
in his lap and found herself searching for the glint of a ring. A moment later,
she smiled at her effort.

“So...why
are you in here? Why don’t you want me to turn on the light?”

“I
don’t...” He cleared his throat. It was the first time she had heard him
hesitate. “I don’t want you to see me.”

Annie
sat back on her heels, unmindful of her skirt. There was no reason to worry
about him glimpsing her panties in the dark! She let out her breath, feeling
unsure and a little ambivalent about her sudden desire to reach out to him,
this strange guy sitting alone in her sister’s kitchen. Empathic by nature, she
knew what it was like to want to get away from a party like this.

“Can
I join you?” she asked.

“Yeah,
sure, come on.” He patted the tile floor and she crawled under, leaning against
the wall next to him. It wasn’t a big table, pressed into a little breakfast
nook. It only sported two chairs since only Chloe and David lived in the huge
old Victorian house, but Annie and the stranger both fit comfortably enough
underneath.

“So...
you just wanted a break from all of that?” She waved her hand toward the door.

“Something
like that.”

“Me,
too.” Annie sighed and leaned her head back against the wall. She had forgotten
about the bump and winced when she made contact. She brought her hand up to rub
the sore spot—at least it was something to feel.

“I
noticed.” He chuckled.

She
flushed. “You didn’t hear what I said out there, did you?” That thought made
her cringe with embarrassment.

“Yeah.”
He sounded sad, but she didn’t sense a lot of judgment or a big guilt trip
coming.

“Whoops.
I was hoping you didn’t know what a bitch I can be,” she admitted. “First
impressions and all...”

“Maybe
it’s better if we all start out knowing who we really are. Wouldn’t that be a
great change? Instead of just looking at people and assuming you know who they
are...”

Annie
waited for him to finish, but he didn’t, so she went on. “Actually, I’m not
really like that. Most of the time. I mean, sometimes, sure, aren’t we all? But
tonight, well, let’s just say there were extenuating circumstances.” Annie
remembered John crawling across the circle, his eyes flickering between the
hemline of her skirt and the V of her blouse. She couldn’t recall if he was
licking his lips, but she could have sworn he was. It was always the
same—even with her own brother-in-law.